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Vladimir Putin has appeared to confirm during an interview that he has survived multiple assassination attempts.

The Russian president made the comments in excerpts from a series of interviews with JFK director Oliver Stone, that will be aired later this month.

In previews of the interviews, released on Thursday evening, Mr Putin and Mr Stone discuss attitudes to death. Asked by Mr Stone about five alleged assassination attempts, Mr Putin said his security team look after him and that "up to now they haven't done badly."

"I trust them," he added when asked if he feared assassins could infiltrate his security detail.

"You know what our people say: he who is fated to be hanged won't drown," he adds to Stone, who does not have an immediate answer.

Asked what his own fate would be, he said: "Only God knows our fate."

In another segment, Mr Putin defended Edward Snowden, saying he was was wrong to leak details US intelligence eavesdropping programs but is not a traitor to the United States.

Edward Snowden has lived in Moscow since fleeing the US in 2013Credit:
THE GUARDIAN

“Snowden is not a traitor. He did not betray the interests of his country, and he did not pass any other country that would have harmed his own country or his own people,” Mr Putin said in footage that showed him at the wheel of a car. “Everything he does he does publicly.”

Mr Putin’s government granted Mr Snowden asylum in Russia in 2013, leading critics to accuse the fugitive of wittingly or unwittingly working for the Russian intelligence services.

Mr Snowden is wanted in the United States for theft of government property and violating the Espionage Act.

Mr Putin did not deny Mr Stone's assertion that he had survived several assassination attemptsCredit:
Yuri Kadobnov/POOL AFP

Mr Putin went on to compare Mr Snowden’s dilemma to his own decision to resign from the KGB in 1991 – a decision that he said followed a coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev by hardliners in the Soviet security agency.